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Friday, May 7, 2010

Being a copy-cat, as we used to say when I was a child, I found a great post by Leah over at Random Notes [hey, with a name like that it HAS to be good, right?] and I want to jump on board. Instead of creating a Bucket List, Leah decided to make a list of all the great things she'd already been able to do. She called this her "Already Bucketed List"

I like this so much better than the Bucket List and here’s why. Some of the things that ended up on my "Bucketed" list would never have been on any list of things I hoped to do some day. For instance, I didn’t even know that my great-great-grandfather was buried in that Toronto cemetery until I went there for a different reason. Also, I’m not a whiskey drinker, but being able to taste the peat-y flavor imparted to the whiskey by the brewing techniques particular to a specific area was a not-to-be-missed experience when one is actually standing in a distillery on the Isle of Skye.

So thanks Leah!! –I have really enjoyed this chance to be reminded of all the wonderful, amazing things I’ve experienced in my first 50(ish) years. It makes me look forward to the next 50 with a renewed sense of excitement and wonder about what is yet to come…things that I don’t even know that I want to do but will love when they happen!!

Diana’s Already Bucketed List

1. Watched a “thundering herd” of buffalo as they ran madly across a meadow.

2. Walked down the same dirt path from the small village of Blebo Craig (in Fife, Scotland) to the parish church of Kemback that my great-great-grandfather, James Ritchie would have walked with his siblings and parents in the mid-1800’s.

3. Tasted the smokey, peat-y whiskey distilled on the Isle of Skye - while ON the Isle of Skye.

4. Walked the very streets of Bath where Jane Austen set some memorable scenes in her novels Nothanger Abbey and Persuasion.

5. Drank water straight from a rushing mountain stream in Colorado. It was so cold it seemed like it must have been snow only moments ago. (And I lived to tell about it – ah the innocence of the times before everything we put into our mouths was going to kill us)
6. And speaking of Jane Austen, walked out on the Cobb in Lyme Regis.

7. Stood by my great-great-grandparents grave in Inverurie, Scotland. [well OK, that's my Dad, not me - but I was there too!]

8. Watched a Shakespearean play performed in Stratford-upon-Avon.

9. Stood at the continental divide and watch the water running both ways – twice! Once in Colorado as a child, once in Wyoming as an adult.

Diana - you have some wonderful things on your bucketed list! Your strawberries mention made me think of eating sweet peas right out of my aunt's garden when I was little - the taste has never been matched since! Thanks for the mention!! :-)

Love how you said what you don't know you will do what you will love having done, ahh, you said it better. Visiting ancestral home places is awesome. I understand the feeling and mine was only in america.

Love your list ...and the Kemback sign ...I too love to feel I have stood and walked where those before me have trod.Life has been a bit upside down so I am sorry I've not been intouch ...hope you are keeping well ...where do the months go ????.